A Missing Chapter in KQED History

Posted by Larry - July 11, 2004 (entry 207)

A MISSING CHAPTER IN KQED HISTORY
By Dick Meister

Funny thing about that official history KQED put out last month [april] to
mark its 50th year in public broadcasting. It omitted the key event that
involved the public in the San Francisco-based station's operations as never
before -- and never since. The Chronicle's stories covering KQED's history
left it out, too.

Although the Chronicle's omission is puzzling,it's understandable that
KQED's management would prefer to ignore what was the first and only major
strike against a public broadcasting station. For 18 weeks in late 1974 and
early 1975, the strike by employees of KQED's television and radio stations
severely curtailed KQED's operations and won widespread public support for
the striking engineers, filmmakers, camera operators, announcers and others
led by the reporters for KQED's highly popular nightly news program,
"Newsroom."

I recall the strike all too clearly, for I was "Newsroom's" labor reporter
at the time and in charge of the strikers' publicity efforts. We waged an
extremely heavy campaign. We turned out buttons, bumper strips, T-shirts and
a variety of leaflets and posters. We held numerous rallies and
demonstrations, placed ads and "free speech messages" on several radio and
TV stations and, through simple classified ads in the Chronicle and
Examiner, built a list of 1,500 "Friends of the KQED Strike" who were sent
weekly news releases and otherwise were kept in close contact.

The campaign's most unusual aspect was the daily broadcasting of "Newsroom
of the Streets," which was taped at varying outdoor locations by the regular
"Newsroom" crew for showing nightly on Bay Area cable channels. We also
published a widely circulated daily strike bulletin featuring the superb
cartoon work of Dan O'Neill.

Supporters sent hundreds of letters to KQED's management and Board of
Directors in behalf of the strikers. They demanded refunds of their
membership fees and pledged not to contribute more until the strike was
settled fairly. They provided much of the man and woman power that our
small band of 80 strikers needed to conduct major activities, much of the
essential inspiration and half the $4,000 a week we spent to run the strike.

Individual donors ranged from a cabbie who stopped at a picket line one day
with $2 "so you guys can have some coffee," to the hundreds of people who
sent checks ranging from $5 to $100.

Outsiders donated food as well as money, joined us on the picket lines, and
helped line up their unions and community groups behind us and our union,
the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (not the
National Association of Broadcasters for Education Television, as the
Chronicle curiously identified the union in its account of KQED's history).

Some supporting unions sent as much as $5,000. Some, like the San
Francisco-Oakland Newspaper Guild, "adopted" strikers by sending a check
every week. The Teachers Union and others sent volunteer to picket and to
help in the chores at strike headquarters on a regular basis.

The widespread labor support was probably best explained by Steven Thompson,
the recording secretary of a Painters Union local which contributed $50 to
the strike fund.

"We, too, are a small union, and generally cannot afford to give monetary
assistance even of such a minor nature," Thompson wrote the Strike
Committee. "But is is our belief that your cause is especially important in
that it is concerned with, and in the eye of, a media which affects us all
so deeply. A victory for KQED strikers will eventually, we reason, have a
more striking effect for organized labor, public services and other small
unions than any other action we could support."

Celebrities such as singer Joan Baez and union leaders Harry Bridges and
Cesar Chavez spoke out for us. Malvina Reynolds wrote two songs for us.
Then-State Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and Congressmen Phil and John
Burton and virtually all other major officeholders in the Bay Area were
outspokenly on our side, too. They warned KQED it would have a very tough
time getting government funds until the strike was settled.

Much of the support was based on the popularity of "Newsroom." Letters
poured into KQED blaming management intransigence for the nightly absence of
what a typical protester called "The finest program of its kind --the most
viewed news reporting in this area."

Strikers greatly limited the station's on-air solicitation of funds that the
station hoped to use as a major weapon against them. Although unable to
produce "Newsroom" or any other local programs, KQED did manage to continue
broadcasting, primarily by using national programming provided through the
Public Broadcasting System. But whenever KQED's management went on the air
to pitch for viewers to "call in and pledge money," strikers and their
supporters rushed to the telephones to tie up the lines with protests to
KQED. Before the strike, a single "Pledge Night" would bring in $15,000 to
$20,000, but those held during the strike eventually were returning less
than $1,000.

Our greatest accomplishment may have been simply the act of staying
together. We were a highly diverse group with a wide variety of occupational
and social concerns, and many were new to unions and collective action. But
though we often argued heatedly, none of us broke ranks to return to work,
despite the length of the strike and repeated management attempts to divide
us.

In the end, however, we got relatively little for our extraordinary efforts
in what amounted to a war of attrition against us by KQED management. We won
our basic demand for union contracts, but with pay, benefits and rights less
than those of our counterparts elsewhere. And we and our supporters were
only temporarily successful in related demands that KQED give employees and
KQED members an effective voice in operations of the station, which KQED
management described as "a private, non-profit corporation" rather than
vital non-commercial public entity.

Nor did we succeed in our attempt to halt the move by KQED's management
toward a commercial TV style that KQED has now almost thoroughly adopted,
complete with commercials for program underwriters.

Our defeat -- and defeat it clearly was -- marked the beginning of the end
for "Newsroom." KQED management, headed by veterans of commercial TV, moved
in to take tight control over what had been a collective of independent
reporters gathering and presenting information in their fields of expertise
with a minimum of the interference from editors, news directors and the like
which is common in commercial TV.

"Newsroom" became simply a commercial news program without commercials,
generally reporting the same stories in the same ways as other local TFV
news outlets. As elsewhere, reporters usually were told what to cover and
frequently how to do it. Their stories had to reflect, or at least not
oppose, the views of a news director who chased audience ratings with all
the passion of his insecure counterparts in the commercial world.

Often, the reporter's knowledge of a particular story didn't go far beyond
what appeared in the script, just as in most local TV news operations, where
reporters are mainly generalists merely developing the story ideas of
editors and news directors. But even that didn't much matter, since the
devotion to commercial TV style meant more, briefer stories and hence little
time for the ad lib discussion that was one of "Newsroom's" unique features.

William Osterhaus, KQED's president and general manager at the time, was
especially pleased with the tight control over reporters. He rejected the
reporters' demand for the right to be fired or laid off only for economic
reasons, misconduct or other just cause.

That right, common in most union contracts, including those covering print
reporters, is essential if reporters are to have the basic security and
independence to dig where they may without concern for employers who could
fire or threaten to fire them anytime they dug into an overly sensitive
spot. But Osterhaus insisted on the right to fire reporters at will, to give
them no more standing than the right to work until he decided "you are not
what we want, goodbye."

He soon decided that I was not what he wanted. Not long after the strike, I
was fired for "insubordination" for refusing to limit my coverage of labor
matters.

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